

A Sketch of the 

History of Civil Service Reform 
in England, India, and the 
United States 

BY 

IMOGEN B. OAKLEY 




PUBLISHED BY THE 

General Federation of Women’s Clubs 

December^ i()0^ 



Second Edition 











AUTHORITIES CONSULTED. 


Dorman P. Eaton—“The History of Civil Service Reform 
in England and the United States.” 

Sir George Chesney—“Indian Polity.” 

Sir Courtney Ilbert—“Government of India.” 

Sir William Lee Warner, K.C.S.I.—“The Indian Civil 
Service.” 

H. G. Keene—“History of India.” 

Lawrence Lowell—“Colonial Civil Service.” 

Macaulay—“Essays on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings.” 
J, Morley—“Life of Gladstone.” 

Reports of the United States Civil Service Commission. 



CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN ENGLAND, 

“There is one better thing than good government,” says 
Edwin Burritt Smith, “and that is self-government.” 

Self-government does not of necessity imply good govern¬ 
ment. Life and property have often been more secure under 
a despotism than under a democracy, nevertheless, self- 
government with all its faults is the ideal toward which the 
peoples are constantly reaching. 

The history of the Anglo-Saxon race is the record of a 
continuous struggle on the part of the people for the right of 
making and administering their own laws. In the early days 
of the monarchy the sole right of administration was vested 
in the king. His appointing power was absolute and unques¬ 
tioned. All public offices were held subject to his will and 
pleasure. He could give or sell charters, grants and monopo¬ 
lies without fear of protest. His venal favorites presided in 
the courts of justice, and interpreted the law of the land in 
the interest of the highest bidder. The common people were 
in a condition little better than slavery, and too ignorant to 
know the cause of their own miser3^ These were the palmy 
days of the spoils system. 

The first protest against the absolute appointing power of 
the king came from the great nobles in 1214. They forced 
King John to sign the Magna Charta, whose clause restrict¬ 
ing the appointment of “justices, constables, sheriffs and 
bailiffs, to such 'as know the law of the land and mean truly 
to observe it,” is the first civil service rule in English history. 

The fourteenth century saw the birth of Wickliffe, and 
great ideas began to stir the heart of England. The people 
were learning to think, and with thinking came an insight into 
the cause of their grievances. They grew restive under the 
increasing taxation, the sale of offices, the gross injustice of 
the courts, the domineering insolence of the high officials. 
Freedom of speech did not exist for them; the right of peti¬ 
tion was denied. 

The inevitable outbreak came early in the reign of Richard 
II. Kings then ruled by divine right, and rebellion was not 
only treason to the state, but sacrilege against the Lord’s 
Anointed; nevertheless, the royal advisers found themselves 

By Trinxftv 

OCT 28 \m 


forced to listen to the people and pay heed to their com¬ 
plaints. 

A parliament was called in 1377 and an examination of 
public accounts granted. This was the first inquiry into the 
abuses of administration ever undertaken in England, and the 
first recognition by the official class that the king's service 
was also in a small degree the people’s service. 

Armed rebellion being quelled, the fair promises of king 
and council were soon forgotten, but this great public up¬ 
heaval did not subside without leaving behind it a remarka¬ 
ble statute that provided that no justice of the peace, sheriff, 
or other officer of the king should be appointed “for any gift 
or brokerage, favor or affection, but all such must be of the 
best and most lawful men.” 

This statute is the second step in the reform of the civil 
service, and affirms the fundamental principle that the ap¬ 
pointing power is not a mere perquisite of the ruler to be 
exercised according to his own good pleasure, but a public 
trust, requiring that all appointments be dependent upon per¬ 
sonal merit and a regard for the public welfare. 

As might have been expected, a statute so far in advance 
of the age had small heed from the haughty Plantagenet 
kings and their subservient parliaments. 

The spoils system continued only slightly curtailed and still 
leading to outrageous corruption and oppression. 

By the middle of the fifteenth century the crushing taxa¬ 
tion and the royal interference with elections led to another 
popular outbreak. An armed multitude marched up to Lon¬ 
don and demanded a change of ministry, a more careful ex¬ 
penditure of revenue, and the restoration of the freedom of 
elections. 

Although under the leadership of men who were far from 
ideal reformers, these two great uprisings, a century apart, 
were the first distinct endeavors to bring about civil service 
reform in England. The people then for the first time made 
the civil administration a political issue, and demanded 
certain specific reforms. The second rebellion, like the first, 
arrested for a time the grosser abuses, but the sources and 
methods of the spoils system were but slightly disturbed. 
Public opinion, however, acquired greater power; officials 
were taught a wholesome lesson of caution, and the lower 
grades of society were raised in the same degree that feu¬ 
dalism and despotism lost their strength and their terrors. 

It is worthy of note that these two rebellions were the 
only instances of the people taking up arms in their own 


4 


behalf during the whole period from the Norman Conquest 
to the reign of Charles I. 

The cause of justice and equal rights languished under the 
rule of the Tudors and the Stuarts. The long practice of 
making merchandise of public authority had vitiated and 
benumbed the moral sense of the English nation. Constant 
wars diverted popular attention from the aggressions of the 
kings and their ministers, and the spoils system became the 
rule in church as well as state. Not only were all political 
offices for sale, even the royal pardon becoming a marketable 
commodity, but in the days of the Stuarts, bishoprics and 
other benefices were openly disposed of to the highest bid¬ 
der. The patron of a benefice made no distinction between 
clergymen and laymen. The cathedrals and churches of 
London became the chosen scenes of riot and profanity. 
Bribery of the king and his favorites was the only road to 
political and ecclesiastical preferment. 

The Stuarts acted upon the simple principle that if an office 
was theirs to give it must also be theirs to sell, and the man 
who contended otherwise was a traitor and forfeited his 
head. 

Cromwell carried a new idea into the government. He was 
the first Englishman in supreme authority to hold himself 
responsible to the people and to govern in their name, 
although to him the people meant only his own adherents in 
church and state. He anticipated the next generation in in¬ 
troducing the partisan spoils system, or the subservience of 
the state to the party, as opposed to the despotic spoils 
system, or the subservience of the state to the king. He 
believed with the politician of to-day that “to the victor 
belong the spoils,” and he did not scruple to use official 
patronage as a means of strengthening his party and perpet¬ 
uating his power. The utter failure of his well-laid plans is 
simply another proof that official patronage never awakens 
gratitude nor genuine loyalty. Its recipients are well aware 
that their plans are due to favor; hence, their natural im¬ 
pulse is to follow him who has the most favors to bestow. 

The mighty personality of Cromwell being removed, those 
anxious to retain their places hastened to proclaim their 
adherence to the new dispenser of patronage. The accession 
of Charles II ushered in a saturnalia of official corruption. 
The royalists, denied all recognition during Cromwell’s ad¬ 
ministration, were frantic for place and power, and Charles 
rewarded them according to the measure of their sycophancy. 
He bestowed judgeships upon briefless favorites, and peer- 


s 


ages upon boon companions. Titles, places, commissions 
and pardons were to be bought from the great dignitaries of 
the realm. Charles was the first English king to meet hos¬ 
tile legislation with bribes. In the true spirit of the spoils 
system he hushed the occasional protests of Parliament with 
promises of profit and place, and himself openly accepted 
bribes from the East India Company. His brother James 
went a step farther by selling his influence in his own court 
to the king of France. Under this last Stuart the spoils 
system attained its rankest growth. Judges levied blackmail, 
and royal favorites looted the public treasury. Honors and 
titles, contracts and pardons, were sold at Whitehall scarcely 
less openly than vegetables at Covent Garden. Every possi¬ 
ble exercise of official authority by every grade of official 
from the lowest to the highest was in the market as mer¬ 
chandise. Elections became farces. Returns were manip¬ 
ulated as skillfully as they now are in the most closely con¬ 
tested wards in New York or Philadelphia. 

But the leaven of the love of good government, which has 
never been wholly inert in the Anglo-Saxon race, was slowly 
fermenting under all this corruption of placemen and sine- 
curists, and in 1688 a great popular revolution cast James out 
of England and freed the country forever of the Stuarts and 
their spoilsmen. 

Through all these changes and revolutions the people were 
slowly learning the important lesson that wise administra¬ 
tion depends as much upon methods as upon men, and 
remembering the price they had paid for their trust in 
Charles II, they imposed certain conditions upon William of 
Orange before calling him to the throne. By the Bill of 
Rights of 1688 they declared that “elections of members of 
Parliament ought to be free,” that “no person holding office 
under the king shall serve as a member of the House of Com¬ 
mons,” and somewhat later it was enacted that “judges shall 
hold office during good behavior.” These enactments form 
the third series of civil service rules, and secure independence 
in the discharge of duty; the first two bearing only upon 
qualifications for appointment. 

William accepted the conditions in good faith, and in the 
midst of the seething corruption of English politics, became 
himself a practical reformer. Finding no continued support 
for his plans and policy amid the contending factions in Par¬ 
liament, he proposed as a measure of harmony that a Cabinet 
Council be formed from among the members in majority, 
under whose advice he would carry on the government. The 


6 


adoption of this measure in 1693 marks the beginning of our 
modern system of party government. With the Cabinet as a 
foothold, Parliament was not slow in seizing executive power 
and patronage. Corruption follows fast in the wake of 
patronage, and as the appointing power fell more and more 
into the hands of the members of Parliament, parliamentary 
elections became more and more mere records of barter and 
sale. Already in 1701, Defoe tells us, there was a regular set 
of stock-jobbers, who made a business of buying and selling 
seats in Parliament, the market price in his time being 1000 
guineas. 

Those aspiring to Cabinet seats were constantly creating 
new offices at high salaries. Every new Cabinet minister 
turned out all his subordinates to make room for his own 
supporters. Contested elections were invariably decided in 
favor of the party in power. Local appointments were dic¬ 
tated from London. The press was censored. Private let¬ 
ters of the party in opposition were opened in the post office. 
Places were bestowed on condition that a large percentage 
of the perquisites be paid over to some third party, a method 
closely allied with the vicious American system of levying 
party assessments upon office holders. Conditions grew 
steadily worse under Anne and her immediate successors, 
and every grade of society reflected in some degree the 
official demoralization. 

George III pushed the spoils system to an extent only ex¬ 
ceeded in the time of the last Stuart. Bribery was employed 
on a scale never known before in England. An office was 
actually opened in the treasury for the bribery of members 
of Parliament. Boroughs were publicly advertised for sale, 
and elections were venal beyond all example in history. In¬ 
competent men, boys, and even idiots, were appointed to 
places of trust. The king himself offered bribes and shared 
in the official corruption. He made his infant son a bishop 
and endowed other fortunate babes with lucrative colonial 
appointments. The mutterings of the people, interpreted in 
Parliament by Pitt, Burke and Sheridan, and the successful 
revolt of the American colonies, finally forced George and 
his successors to yield to the demand for administrative re¬ 
form. Loss of empire was a potent argument in the hands 
of the reformers, and from 1780 to 1853 a series of acts for¬ 
bidding the sale and brokerage of offices, and prescribing 
heavy penalties for bribery in all its forms, was passed by 
reluctant Parliaments in obedience to popular behest. 

The members of Parliament, however, still retained their 


7 


right of appointment. They might not barter or sell the 
offices under their control, but they were free to give them 
to their followers without reference to knowledge or fitness. 
They refused to consider any bill that provided for tests of 
character or capacity in candidates for office, and the civil 
service continued to be the refuge of broken down party 
workers and incapable members of great families. 

But revolution was in the air, and the passage of the Re¬ 
form Bill of 1832 was the concession of Parliament to a 
popular agitation that menaced the existence of the peerage 
and put the throne itself into danger. The great extension 
of suffrage, and the restriction of caste privileges secured 
by this bill, were followed in rapid succession by a series of 
reforms which revolutionized the whole system of govern¬ 
ment, and yet the public opinion that could compel such rad¬ 
ical changes was not strong enough to get a place in public 
service for a young man of merit, without the endorsement 
of a member of Parliament or some leading official. 

During the Melbourne administration, between 1834 and 
1841, the higher officials joined with the people in demanding 
some test of efficiency in candidates for office, declaring that 
they could not do the public work with such an array of in- 
capables as the partisan system supplied. The ministry 
yielded to the extent of requiring candidates to answer a 
certain number of test questions, but these “pass examina¬ 
tions,” as they were called, while ridding the government 
officers of actual idiots, and the obviously incapable, were 
but a poor substitute for competitive examination, and re¬ 
sulted in but a slight improvement in the public service. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN INDIA. 

Meanwhile the conscience of the nation had been stirred 
over the reports of the oppression and extortion practiced 
in India under the authority oi the East India Company. 
Organized in 1600 as a company of traders, under a charter 
granted by Elizabeth, the East India Company had, in two 
hundred years, advanced to the dignity of territorial sov¬ 
ereigns. Their original charter was almost identical with the 
one granted by Charles I to the Massachusetts Bay Com¬ 
pany, the difference in their operations being due to the dif¬ 
ference in the countries exploited. The western traders 
found primeval forests, savage tribes and scattered colonists; 
those in the East rejoiced in rich cities to loot and in dense 
population to lay tribute upon. The state of perpetual war¬ 
fare among the Indian princes proved the opportunity of 
the East India Company. Giving aid now to one side and 


now to another, and taking their reward in territory, they 
soon 'became rulers over an extensive empire. Their charter 
was renewed from time to time by Elizabeth’s successors, 
with more and more power to the Company, their* prestige 
in India growing in the same proportion. The close of the 
eighteenth century found them performing the contradictory 
functions of English traders, agents of the native princes, 
and sovereigns over a wide-spreading territory. 

As sovereigns, they maintained their own army and their 
own civil service. The London directors of the Company 
reserved the right of patronage and filled all places with 
their own favorites, with the natural consequence that all 
the familiar abuses of the spoils S3''stem prevailed in their 
most flagrant forms throughout the Company’s dominions. 

Oppression and pillage were the system of government. 
The civil and military employees of the Company were paid 
the most meagre salaries, but no objection was made should 
they choose to add to their incomes by extorting presents 
and tribute from the unfortunate natives. Young clerks 
went out to India on salaries of five pounds a year, and re¬ 
turned nabobs. The enormous fortunes thus suddenly 
amassed, and the recriminations among members of the 
service over their share of the spoils, finally attracted public 
attention, and led, in 1773, to a parliamentary investigation. 

It is difficult to exaggerate the abuses of patronage brought 
to light by this investigation, and the extraordinary powers 
of the Company, combined with their political immorality, 
had, in addition, cast an appearance of bad faith over all 
the dealings of the English with the native princes. The 
utmost that could be claimed for the Company was that the 
corruption and extortion of their agents were, perhaps, a 
shade less flagrant than the people were accustomed to from 
their native rulers. Reform was demanded not by the people 
of India, long inured to oppression and pillage; nor by the 
Indian princes, who, overawed by the military genius and 
audacity of Clive and his successors, dreamed of revenge 
rather than of justice; but by the awakened conscience of 
England. Civil service reform did not, as many believe, 
enter England via Calcutta, but reached India from England, 
under the inspiration of that same sturdy middle class thaf 
would have also preserved the loyalty of the American col¬ 
onies had their will been heeded by king and Parliament. 
The first step toward administrative reform in India was an 
act of Parliament curtailing the power of the East India 
Company, and forbidding its high officials from accepting 


9 


presents from the Indian princes, or their representatives, 
under penalty of forfeiting twice the amount received. 

The trial of Warren Hastings, Governor-general of India 
for thirteen years, with the fresh recital of the corruption 
and political immorality among the servants of the East 
India Company, still further aroused public indignation and 
compelled the passage, in 1784, of Pitt’s India Bill. 

This bill provided for a Board of Control, which should 
exercise a supervision over all the acts of the East India 
Company, and provided, further, that every officer of the 
Indian service should, on returning to England, give a com¬ 
plete inventory of all 'his property and how acquired, as well 
as what property he had disposed of or transferred, and if 
at any time within three years this inventory could be proved 
false, the officer should forfeit his entire fortune. 

In 1788, Lord Cornwallis, then Governor-general of India, 
took a long stride toward reform by abolishing the perqui¬ 
sites of the employees of the Company and substituting a 
very liberal system of salaries. The employees upon their 
appointment entered into a covenant with the Company 
whereby they agreed not to engage in any private trade nor 
speculation, and those signing this agreement constituted 
what was known as the covenanted service. 

But it was speedily discovered that all these changes and 
stringent laws could bring about no permanent improvement 
so long as the London directors retained the right of patron¬ 
age, and continued to send out to India their indigent friends 
and relatives, regardless of education or ability. Reform was 
needed at the fountain-head, and in 1808 the Board of Con¬ 
trol established at Haileybury, in England, a school for the 
training of candidates for the Indian service. The substitu¬ 
tion of young men specially instructed in the laws, languages, 
and customs of India, for the needy retainers of the di¬ 
rectors, made a noticeable improvement in the character of 
the service, and many of the Haileybury men left their im¬ 
press upon Indian colonial history. The directors, however, 
still retained the right of patronage. No one could enter 
the school at Haileybury without their nomination. 

Another parliamentary investigation in 1853 showed that 
in consequence of this favoritism, the standard of the school 
was low and getting lower, and that the Indian service, not¬ 
withstanding its general improvement, was still marked by 
corruption, inefficiency, a humiliating failure to command 
the respect of the best people, and a still more alarming fail¬ 
ure to control the unruly classes. 


10 


The Board of Control, therefore, in answer to the demand 
of public opinion, abolished all rights of patronage in the 
Indian service, and opened every position to free competitive 
examination. Every young man in England, and every 
native of India able to go to England for examination, was 
free to enter himself as a candidate for the Indian service. 
This sweeping reform was the forerunner of the passing, of 
the East India Company. The great mutiny was the last 
chapter in the long story of its misrule, and in 1858 all its 
powers were transferred to the Crown. 

By the law of 1853 the merit system, based upon open com¬ 
petitive examination, was, for the first time in history, put 
into actual practice on a large scale. The results were so 
encouraging that the English ministry, in obedience to popu¬ 
lar demand, decided to introduce the same reform into the 
home government. Parliament was still the obstacle. It 
refused to give up its patronage or to consider any bill that 
favored appointment by merit. The ministry was, therefore, 
obliged to disregard the legislative body, and, in 1855, with 
the royal approval, took the bold step of appointing a civil 
service commission and ordering competitive examinations 
among all candidates for office under the civil service, with 
the proviso, dictated by the national reluctance to overturn 
long-established customs, that Parliament retain the sole 
right of nominating the candidates. 

Popular approval of this action of the ministry was so 
emphatic that Parliament dared not long delay its endorse¬ 
ment. Moreover, the right of nomination became of little 
value when official recommendation no longer gave an office, 
but merely the chance to compete for one; and two years 
later its members fell into line with the majority and re¬ 
solved, by a vote of nearly two to one, that they were in 
favor of the system of competitive examination and the 
abolition of all official patronage, and made known to the 
ministry and the people that they were ready to provide for 
any expense which an extension of the system might entail. 

After long and thorough investigation into the working 
of the competitive system so far as it then existed, the min¬ 
istry, on the 4th of July, 1870, through an executive order in 
council, abolished official patronage and favoritism, and de¬ 
creed that the civil service examinations be henceforth open 
to all persons “of requisite age and health who may be de¬ 
sirous of attending the same.” 

That clause of the law of 1853 which required natives of 
India to go to England to be examined was repealed, and 


boards of examination were established in various places in 
India, before which any native, be he Hindoo, Mohammedan 
or Parsee, was given the right to appear as a candidate for 
“any office, place or employment” in the Indian service. 

In order to secure a still higher guarantee of capacity 
through the service, no actual appointment was to be made 
unjil after six months’ trial of official work. 

The change made no break in governmental routine. The 
holders of positions under the civil service were simply re¬ 
quired to take the scheduled examinations; those who were 
successful retained their places; those who failed were grad¬ 
ually superseded as new candidates fulfilled their terms of 
probation. Absolute fairness in the examination has been 
maintained from the beginning, by the rule which requires 
that the papers of every candidate be kept filed for public 
inspection. A place won by merit is logically retained dur¬ 
ing good behavior, so with the exception of the heads of the 
great political departments, all the civil offices are held per¬ 
manently. A change in the English ministry means as rad¬ 
ical a change in policy as a change of administration in the 
United States, yet of all the thousands of offices connected 
with the civil service, never more than fifty change hands. 
So far from destroying party spirit, the merit system seems 
rather to have intensified it, since it has given the office¬ 
holder a freedom of opnion and action he never before pos¬ 
sessed. 

The chief argument of the privileged classes against the 
merit system, was that it was a measure in the interests of 
the lower orders of society, whose hands would soon grasp 
all appointments. In the United States, on the contrary, its 
opponents affect to think it undemocratic and tending to pro¬ 
duce an aristocracy of office-holders. In both countries the 
system has proved itself democratic in the best sense of the 
word. The common schools have supplied 90 per cent, of 
the successful candidates, and the universities but 10 per cent. 
In England, moreover, the adoption of the merit system 
marks a wonderful advance in popular education, for with 
the privilege of aspiring to a place in the public service has 
come the necessity of fitting one’s self for that privilege. 
Public intelligence has risen to meet the demands of an in¬ 
telligent system. Thirty years’ experience has only strength¬ 
ened its hold upon popular favor, and there is probably no 
public man in England who would advocate a return to the 
days of official patronage. 

With a few variations in administration adapted to the 


12 


diverse local conditions of a wide-spreading empire, the 
competitive system has assured the loyalty of the colonies 
and has made the English civil service respected throughout 
the world. The English people themselves have made it so 
essentially a feature of their government that a reported vio¬ 
lation of its rules nearly caused the downfall of the most 
popular prime minister of the nineteenth century. Lord 
Beaconsfield, at the height of his power, was once accused 
of appointing one of his adherents to a minor clerkship with¬ 
out requiring him to submit to competitive examination. 
Such a popular storm was raised by this reported violation 
of justice and equal rights, that Lord Beaconsfield was forced 
to make a categorical denial of the charge from his place in 
the House of Lords. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES. 

“No nation,” according to Lecky, “ever started on its ca¬ 
reer with a larger proportion of strong character, or a higher 
sense of moral conviction, than the English colonies in 
America. They almost entirely escaped the corruption that 
so deeply tainted the government at home.” 

Their experience with the corrupt and incapable civil 
agents sent out from England led our early statesmen to 
insist strongly upon character and efficiency as the sole 
requisites for office holding. Washington, Jefferson, and 
Adams have left on record strong expressions of their abhor¬ 
rence of that political system which degrades the public ser¬ 
vice into a mere reward for partisan activity. They held 
that public office is a solemn trust. For thirty-nine years 
the government was administered on these high principles. 
In all that time there were but seventy-three removals from 
office. Public employees were encouraged to work with an 
eye single to the good of the service by the full assurance 
that their terms of office depended solely upon their own 
honesty and efficiency. 

In 1820 an act of Congress limiting to four years the terms 
of office of collectors of customs, navy agents, army pay¬ 
masters, and similar responsible offices, became the oppor¬ 
tunity of the spoilsmen. It was engineered through Congress 
by an adroit politician with the ostensible purpose of pro¬ 
viding for a periodical examination into the accounts of these 
officers, and the popular understanding was that all who 
stood the test were to be immediately reappointed. Monroe 
and John Quincy Adams, by their unpartisan interpretation 
of the act, frustrated the spoilsmen for nine years, but with 


13 


the inauguration of General Jackson in 1829 began the pros¬ 
titution of the public service to intrigue and partisanship. He 
began what he was pleased to call “his task of reform,” by- 
making more removals in one month than six presidents had 
made in thirty-nine years, and his first year in office marked 
the dismissal of two thousand meritorious public servants, 
whose only ofifense lay in their political opinons. He filled 
their places with his own partisans, paying small heed either 
to their integrity or ability. Consternation reigned through¬ 
out the country. The surviving statesmen of the Revolu¬ 
tionary period denounced in unmistakable terms this sub¬ 
version of the principles of good government. 

Jackson’s apologists have since claimed that it was really 
Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s Secretary of State, who thus 
handed over the government as a prey to the spoilsmen. 
Van Buren had been a disciple of Aaron Burr when that 
astute politician laid the foundation of party patronage in 
New York, and devised a regular political machine, which 
later developed into Tammany Hall. But whether upon Van 
Buren or Jackson must rest the ignominy of having intro¬ 
duced the spoils system into national politics, no one can 
explain away Jackson’s responsibility during his own admin¬ 
istration, and he and Van Buren are the only presidents in 
our history who failed to express their detestation of a sys¬ 
tem which reduces the public service to spoils of war. 

By 1835 the demoralization of the service had become such 
a scandal that a committee was appointed by the Senate to 
enquire into the extent of executive patronage and the prac¬ 
ticability of its reduction. Their report showed an enor¬ 
mous increase in the expenses of government under the new 
system, and the committee held that the inevitable tendency 
of patronage was “to convert the entire body of office¬ 
holders into corrupt and supple instruments of power, and 
to raise up a host of greedy subservient partisans ready for 
any services, however base.” 

Successive committees appointed by successive congresses 
reported in practically the same terms, and every president 
after Van Buren urged a return to the methods of Washing¬ 
ton and Adams, but the spoilsmen, in and out of Congress, 
succeeded in defeating every measure looking toward reform. 
In 1853 Congress met the growing complaints against the 
incompetency of government employees by passing an act 
requiring pass examinations in certain departments, but 
although these so-called examinations may have had some 
effect in excluding the most ignorant and illiterate of the 


14 


candidates, they proved, on the whole, quite as ineffectual 
as they had done in England as a means of raising the gen¬ 
eral standard. 

The Civil War, with its inevitable corruption and jobbery, 
increased immeasurably the demoralization of the public ser¬ 
vice. Lincoln complained that the desire for place and the 
pressure of the party leaders for patronage, bore more heav¬ 
ily upon him than all the burdens of the war. The place 
hunters that thronged Washington during the reconstruction 
period, and the ceaseless demands they made upon the ex¬ 
ecutive, led President Grant to appeal to Congress for relief. 
He asked for reform in the manner of making appointments, 
claiming that the spoils system did not “secure the best men, 
and often not even fit men, for the public service.” Mr. 
Jenckes, a member of the House from Rhode Island, had, in 
1866, striven unsuccessfully to obtain a hearing for a civil 
service reform bill, but now, upon the urgent appeal from the 
executive. Congress passed, on March 3, 1871, an act em¬ 
powering the President “to prescribe such rules and regula¬ 
tions for the admission of persons into the civil service of 
the United States as will best promote the efficiency thereof.” 

Under this act. President Grant appointed a commission 
that formulated a complete system of competitive examina¬ 
tions. The President in transmitting their report to Con¬ 
gress, promised himself to observe all the rules, but called 
attention to the fact that without further legislation they 
would not be binding upon his successors. So far from re¬ 
sponding to the President’s advice, the House, in 1874, voted 
to repeal the civil service law, and although the Senate 
showed itself more friendly, the whole subject was dropped, 
leaving the law upon the statute book with no appropriation 
for carrying it out. 

The Republican platform for 1876 declared strongly for 
reform in the civil service, and President Hayes in his in¬ 
augural address spoke of the paramount necessity of the 
reform and urged a return to the principles and practices of 
the founders of the government. In his successive messages 
to Congress he pointed out the failure of pass examinations 
to exclude favoritism and partisan influence, and showed that 
the abuses of the civil service grew with the growth of the 
population, and were becoming too serious to be tolerated. 
In deed as well as in word, Mr. Hayes showed himself a sup¬ 
porter of wiser administrative methods, and during his term 
of office radical reforms were made in the Post Office, the 
Department of the Interior, and the New York Custom 


IS 


House. Mr. Garfield urged the abandonment of the system 
to which he, a little later, himself fell a victim, and his suc¬ 
cessor, Mr. Arthur, in his first message to Congress, asked 
that appointments be based upon ascertained fitness, and 
that the tenure of office be stable. 

A Congressional committee, appointed in 1882 to investi¬ 
gate into the state of the civil service, reported that it was 
“inefficient, extravagant and, in many instances, corrupt, and 
that a change was imperatively demanded.” In accordance 
with this recommendation. Congress passed a bill which re¬ 
ceived the President’s approval and became a law January 16, 
1883. This bill is based upon the preceding one of 1871, and 
embodies also the chief feajiires of the English civil service 
system. It authorizes the President to appoint a commis¬ 
sion who shall devise suitable rules and regulations for se¬ 
curing open competitive examinations; emphasizes the neces¬ 
sity of a term of probation for successful candidates; forbids 
party assessments of office-holders, and expressly stipulates 
that no recommendation from a Senator or member of the 
House shall be received or considered by any board of ex¬ 
aminers. All offices are to be classified according to the 
amount of salary attached before being placed under the 
competitive rules. Those carrying medium salaries were 
classified first and the President was given authority to ex¬ 
tend the classification as occasion should serve. IMr. Arthur 
gave the law his earnest support and extended the number of 
classified places. Mr. Harrison declared the system “incom¬ 
parably better and fairer than that of appointment by favor,” 
and added still further to the classified service. Mr. Cleve¬ 
land believed that the abandonment of the merit system 
would mean the loss of “the surest guarantee of the safety 
and success of American institutions,” and gave it support, 
though handicapped by an overwhelming pressure for place. 
Mr. McKinley, who had been known in Congress as a sup¬ 
porter of the civil service bill, said, upon assuming the office 
of President: 

“The system has the approval of the people, and it will be 
my endeavor to uphold and extend it.” His executive order 
of July, 1897, forbade removals from any office in the classi¬ 
fied service “except for just cause and for reasons given in 
writing.” 

The exigencies of the war with Spain provided opportunity 
for a renewed attack upon the merit system. When the 
Urgency-Deficiency Bill of 1898 was passed by Congress, the 
enemies of the reform succeeded in inserting a clause per- 

16 


mitting the employment of certain clerks in the war and 
treasury departments without examination, on the ground 
that the Civil Service Commission could not provide as many 
as were immediately required. The commission showed that 
it had 6000 certified persons ready for service, but the bill 
passed notwithstanding, and received the President’s sig¬ 
nature. On May 29, 1899, Mr. McKinley issued an executive 
order which had the effect of removing, directly and indi¬ 
rectly, over 10,000 places from the classified service. It was 
doubtless owing to this order and the backward tendency it 
represented, that all mention of civil service reform was 
omitted in 1900 from the platforms of the two great political 
parties, for the first time in twenty-five years. 

• Mr. Roosevelt’s accession to the Presidency put new en¬ 
ergy into the cause of civil service reform. In his first mes¬ 
sage to Congress he said: 

'‘The merit system of making appointments is in its es¬ 
sence as democratic and American as the common school 
system itself. It simply means * * * that when the duties 
are entirely non-political all applicants should have a fair 
field and no favor, each standing on his own merit as he is 
able to show them by practical test. Written competitive 
examinations offer the only available means in many cases 
for applying this system. * * * Wherever the conditions 

have permitted the application of the merit system in its 
fullest and widest sense, the gain to the government has been 
immense. * * * 'p}-,e merit system is simply one method 

of securing honest and efficient administration of the govern¬ 
ment, and, in the long run, the sole justification of any type 
of government lies in its proving itself both honest and 
efficient.” 

One of Mr. Roosevelt’s first steps was to appoint a strong 
civil service commission, through whose efforts, reinforced 
by his own authority, the civil service rules have been re¬ 
vised and extended. Persistent endeavor? have been made 
to break up the practice of transferring favored individuals 
from the unclassified to the classified service without com¬ 
petitive examination. An order has been issued providing 
for boards of labor employment in cities where laborers may 
be registered for positions in the unclassified service. Con¬ 
gress has been reminded that the best interests of our for¬ 
eign trade demand that the consular service be included un¬ 
der the civil service rules. The merit system has been es¬ 
tablished in every department of the civil service of the 
Philippines. Mr. Roosevelt has been especially emphatic in 


17 


his refusal to allow labor unions to interfere v/ith the de¬ 
cisions of the civil service commissioners, and he has lent 
hiis personal influence and authority to the investigation of 
the Post Offlce scandals. 

He has also, it must be admitted, stained this brilliant rec¬ 
ord by yielding to political pressure in several conspicuous 
instances, notably in the boss-ridden states of Pennsylvania 
and Delaware. 

Some method, whether act of Congress or constitutional 
amendment, should be devised whereby all political pat¬ 
ronage could be taken from the senators and representa¬ 
tives and the President freed from the intolerable pressure 
of the party leaders. But as Parliament was for years the 
great obstacle to the reform of the civil service in England, • 
so Congress, greedy of power and patronage, blocks the path 
of good government in the United States. Nothing but an 
educated public opinion will compel Congress, as it did Par¬ 
liament, to consent to purer and better methods of admin¬ 
istration. 

If civil service reform has not, as yet, in this country the 
popular approval it commands in England, it is owing to a 
systematic evasion of its rules by some high officials, and a 
half-hearted support by others. 

Our presidents, since the passage of the law of 1883, have 
all been supporters of the merit system, and each one has 
extended the classified service. They all erred, however, in 
failing to observe the wholesome English precedent of “no 
removals” before placing a department under civil service 
rules, and this error in judgment, or, more accurately, this 
submission to party dictatorship, has caused a certain mis¬ 
apprehension as to the purposes and advantages of the merit 
system. Moreover, the persistent evasion of its responsibil¬ 
ities by Congress and its cowardly committal of the burden 
of reform to the shoulders of the executive, gives the oppor¬ 
tunity for one President, under great political pressure, to 
undo much that has been accomplished by his predecessors. 

But in the face of all these drawbacks, there exists ample 
evidence of the economy and efficiency of the merit system 
wherever it has been honestly applied. The national civil 
service is on a higher plane than at any time since Jackson’s 
administration. Out of 271,188 Federal offices, 134,548 are 
subject to competitive examination, and the list is constantly 
growing. The increasing popularity of the merit system 
compelled all parties in their platforms of 1904 to endorse the 
reform of the civil service and demand an extension of its 

18 


/ 


rules. The power of graft in the various state legislatures 
has made the progress of the reform slow in state affairs. 
New York and Massachusetts stand alone in having effective 
civil service rules based upon the national law. 

The new charters demanded from time to time by our 
growing cities reflect in their provisions for appointment to 
office the increasing desire for a government based upon 
sound business principles, rather than upon a system of pulls, 
deals and political favoritism. 

Boston, New York, Baltimore, San Francisco and Chicago 
have incorporated the competitive system into their local 
government. But however skillfully these charters be 
drawn, there always seems to be some way in which the civil 
service rules can be evaded or ignored under party pressure. 
The various departments of the city government continue to 
be used as rewards for party service, and offices are multi¬ 
plied to provide for needy party workers. 

Under Jackson’s administration, the employees of the New 
York Custom House once refused to testify against a de¬ 
faulting collector, on the ground that they were in his service 
and not in the service of the United States. In like manner 
our police have been taught to regard themselves in the ser¬ 
vice of the local boss, rather than in the service of the city. 
The result is everywhere the same—vice is encouraged, and 
crime protected. In every great city the Department of 
Public Safety has become a department of public danger. 
The only remedy is the absolute divorce of the civil service 
from political influence, whether by the tried system of com¬ 
petitive examination, or by some other more radical method 
yet to be devised. 

The reform of the civil service has become the great moral 
question of the day, and as such commends itself to the 
women of the country. If our women’s clubs stand for any¬ 
thing, they stand for moral progress and civic righteousness. 
In what better cause can we all unite than that of honest, 
unpartisan government? 

The spoils system is second only to slavery in its baneful 
effects upon the national character. As slavery degraded the 
master as well as the slave, so the spoils system saps the 
morals of both rulers and ruled. 

The re-establishment of our civil service upon the plane 
designed for it by the makers of the Constitution has be¬ 
come the imperative duty of the hour. It is the great moral 
question which asks the united attention of the 250,000 mem¬ 
bers of the women’s clubs of America. 


19 




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